Note: Thanks for all of the reviews for the first chapter. I hope that the rest of the chapters live up to your expectations!

When Cobb entered the casino floor again, he knew he shouldn't have been too shocked to see Mal at the Black Jack table. He had hoped that impending motherhood would curb her gumption. Yeah, he should have known better.

"There you are, I thought I told you to stay with the car," Dom whispered into Mal's ear with no warning.

Mal just smiled warmly as if she was expecting him. "I thought of a woman who was in battle while pregnant. Hua Mulan. She was a warrior and went out to the battlefield when she was with child. She dressed as a man, but I do prefer dresses so we'll leave that out, shall we?" She glanced over her shoulder to show her husband that smile of hers that always captured him.

"Place your bets, ladies and gentleman," The dealer proclaimed after passing a pair of cards to each player.

"That was a quick meeting," Mal commented placing a few chips into the pot. "Were you sure to be your charming self?"

Dom sighed. "It didn't exactly happen. We do have a new man to look into. Ask around about someone who works here. Arthur. We need to learn about him the old fashioned way before we make any more moves." There was no need to explain how Dom had come across this Arthur and what he did to Adam Goode. Not yet at least. "Just promise me to find me if you come across him."

"Excuse me, sir," The dealer interrupted. "We are playing a hand. You must wait to be dealt in or leave the table."

"Sorry," Dom took step back while Mal took a peek at her cards. "Got it?" He called out taking a glare from the dealer.

Mal just waved her hand, her eyes firmly planted on her cards. "I'm busy, dear."

He'd take that as a yes. With that, he headed towards the main office of the casino.

Studying her cards, Mal tapped the green. The dealer passed her another card. Those playing around her eyed her suspiciously, probably because that she was the only woman playing cards in the entire casino. Mal always was one to break boundaries. "Well, gentleman, I do believe that I have 21." She laid out her cards. A Jack, a three, and an eight. The others at the table groaned as Mal collected her chips. "I think I'll cash in when the game is good."

Gathering up her chips, she headed towards the "cash in" booths. There were two booths, one was ran by a man and one by a woman. It was an easy choice for Mal.

"Congratulations, Miss," The young woman replied in a fake tone. She was a red head, her pale face looked drawn and tired. Bored really. Mal couldn't imagine that pretending that you were excited for drunken gamblers over and over was an exciting task. It was even better for her though, if the girl was disgruntled, she was more than likely to share secrets of this…Arthur.

Mal offered the girl, her nametag read Sara, a large smile. "Thank you." Glancing around the room, Mal had her eyes search through the crowds desperately. Then she returned to Sara, who appeared to be staring at her. Sara's eyes dropped immediately back to counting the chips. "Sorry. I don't mean to be inattentive…I'm waiting for someone," Mal explained nervously. Eames wasn't the only actor in the business.

Sara nodded politely. "You have won a total of 352 dollars. Would you like to start a Sunstone account and save your winnings for your next visit?"

"Can you cash it?" Mal asked while noting to herself that this alone could pay for the baby's crib. "I have an evening planned you see. Maybe you could even tell me…" Turning around, she scanned the casino floor to make sure that they weren't being watched. "One of your co-workers asked me to meet him in at his apartment tonight. Could you give a girl some advice? His name is Arthur. Am I in for a romantic evening?"

"Ma'am I don't think that this is appropriate…" Sara stopped her words as soon as her brain registered the name. "Arthur? He asked you to go back to his apartment? I doubt…I couldn't imagine him doing that. You sure it was Arthur, the bartender?"

Mal managed to blush on cue. "Believe me I know it was him. He doesn't have a girlfriend does he? She work here? She's not…you?"

"Oh no," Sara let out a harsh chuckle as if it was ridiculous to think of him in such a way. "Arthur is…if he asked you then he must really like you. I've never- he's always been so serious about everything. Especially the job here. I never thought that he'd even date anyone." Suddenly realizing that she was talking about a co-worker's personal life with a customer, Sara closed her mouth tightly and passed Mal a receipt along with her cash. "Have a nice day."

"I will, thank you. I will surely have a nice night at," Mal winked at the girl. It was information. The guy was focused with no real love life, well, at least according to his co-workers. It was helpful, but Mal needed more. Thankfully, she knew that Sara was about to give her just that.

Mal sat down only a few feet behind the cash-in booths. She took her make up case out from her purse, and started to slowly apply lipstick with the help of a compact mirror. Without looking back she clearly heard Sara mutter, "Danny. Did you hear that? That woman I just counted, she's going back to Arthur's place tonight."

"Arthur?" The man from the nearby cash-in booth snorted. "Bull shit. I don't think Arthur even knows what sex is. Did you hear what happened when Deanne tried to flirt with him? She was showing him her boobs and her leg was on his…he just said that he wasn't interested. What kind of man pushes Deanne away? Not me. She was convinced that he was gay."

"Even if he was, he wouldn't be the damn robot that he is," Sara grumbled as if she was annoyed by his mere existence. "It's like, why live life you know? If all you're going to do is mix drinks and do whatever Adam Goode tells you to do."

"Probably gives him a boatload of cash you know," Danny suggested suddenly quiet, a customer must have passed the booths. "Why else would he be friends with that asshole?"

"Didn't you know? Fran said that they grew up together. That they were friends in high school and so Adam's uncle gave Arthur a job." Sara explained. "Shit we'll talk about this later…"

"Hello, Mr. Hallot, how was your day at the craps table? Better than yesterday I hope."

Mal closed her compact and stood up. That, that was plenty of information. Now to find that pesky husband of hers. On her way towards the bar (she had a tendency to find Dom there), she saw a whole squad of cops rushing through the casino. Strangely enough the gamblers didn't seem bothered at all by the police's presence. Half of them didn't bother to look up from whatever game they were playing.

Dom snuck up behind Mal and slipped his hand into hers. "Hi, gorgeous," Dom muttered while eyeing the cops himself. "I think we should start heading towards the exit." The police always put the two of them on edge, if they were ever caught up in something by mistake their occupations were sure to come up.

"It's strange. That no one seems to care about the police," Mal whispered to him, her fingers interlacing with his. "Though, I must ask, love, what happened to our first replacement?"

Dom decided to ignore her as he led her towards the exit of the casino. "Did you get information on him? Arthur?"

Mal nodded glancing up as EMTs passed them. "Yes. Mostly work gossip. Seems that our new friend doesn't have much of a life beyond this place. And he's best friends with Goode, they have been since they were boys. His co-workers believe that is why he has a job here as a bartender."

Dom's eyebrows raised in surprise. Some friendship that must have been. "I borrowed his file from the office. We'll read it in the car." While Mal was talking to Sara, Dom pretended to be someone from corporate and demanded Arthur's file from a terrified secretary, but there was no need to go into that.

The couple walked quickly through the parking lot and slipped into their car. Mal couldn't help but notice there were more police cars coming their way. "Dom," She whispered. "I can deal with you being coy for only so long. What is going on here?"

Dom pulled Arthur's file from his suit jacket and opened it up. "Goode can't be our new replacement. He's dead, Mal."

"How…did you decide that Arthur would be our new extractor? He mix you a fantastic drink after you saw Goode's dead body?" She questioned those big eyes of her very hopeful although she knew that that was wishful thinking.

"No, he was the one who killed Goode," Dom explained simply while passing a photo of Arthur to Mal.

Mal took the photo gently as if it would crumble in her fingertips. "Dom, I don't want to work with a murderer. Even…" Her eyes caught Arthur's for the first time, it made her pause. "He looks like a puppy. Are you sure this is the man who killed Adam Goode?"

"Positive. I don't know how to explain it, Mal, I just have a feeling about this," Dom replied his eyes meeting his wife's once again. "Just trust me okay? I don't think that he's a psychopathic killer. There were two guards outside of Goode's office. It would be been cleaner for him to kill both of them before he went after Goode, but he didn't. He just made sure that they were unconscious."

"Oh how nice of him, he only killed one person," Mal groaned rubbing her face with her hand. "Dom, I understand your hunches. I was all right with working with someone who may have killed someone in a mob like setting, but this is just…he killed a man who was the young leader of a casino. A man who apparently has been his best friend since boyhood. Why would he do that?"

"Jealousy?" Was Dom's first guess.

Mal shook her head. "Not for a woman at least. Money…maybe, but I doubt that Adam Goode had much of a Will at such a young age. Perhaps if he did have a Will he would leave it all to his best friend, but I can't imagine that would go well with the other investors in the casino."

Dom skimmed through Arthur's file. "There is nothing here beyond that picture and an emergency contact information. He has his grandparents listed, but a note was added that they passed away. No new emergency contact since then."

"So, you are alone in the world beyond your best friend. Therefore you decide to kill him…Dom, I don't like this," Mal admitted. When Mal had reservations everyone tended to take notice as she was most often the risk taker.

But Dom was adamant. "There has to be more to this. Right before he left the room, he said 'thank god it's over.' He also mentioned that Goode was there that night, and that he wasn't the only one who lost his parents."

"Arthur was raised by his grandparents," Mal supplied although hesitantly. "Arthur's parents died as well. No information on them in the file?"

"None."

"Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe Arthur's parents worked with Goode's and then things happened as they tend to do working for the mob. But why his best friend?" Mal stared out into the distance now.

Dom pulled out Arthur's emergency contact information from the file, and placed the file itself under his seat in the car. "We can do a few things now. One, we can leave this behind and keep looking for a new co-worker. Two, we can do more research. Go to the local library, find out about Arthur's parents, how they died, then go from there. Or, three, we have Arthur's address. We extract what we need to know. If he's safe we'll take him, if not we'll move on before he even knows we were in his dreams. It's up to you." He leaned back in his seat watching his wife's face for any sign of a decision.

Mal put her fingertips to her mouth. "I need you to do one thing for me. I need you to tell me why it is that you think that Arthur would be a good replacement for me. Why we should try this?"

"Fair enough." Dom agreed taking a deep breath before he explained, "This kid is about one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. He managed to take out two guards that looked like they were on a constant drip of steroids. I was in the corridor when he did it, Mal. I could barely hear it happen. Not only did he take them out, but he didn't kill them…then after he killed Goode, he covered his tracks perfectly. Suicide note. Slight trace of gunpowder to prove Goode put the gun to his own head. This wasn't a crime of passion, Mal. He thought it out for a long while. We need someone who can plan, and we need someone who can do the job. Take out projections, distract them."

"But all of that doesn't mean a damn thing if we can't trust him," Mal practically whispered.

"Do you wanna end this? We can keep looking, you're not too far along-"

"No," Mal replied suddenly. "No ,I want to stay on this. You've…you've peaked my interest, damn you. I just imagine. Dom he looks like he's twelve years old, and he's alone in the world…."

A smirk curled up Dom's lip. "You wanna take in another stray?" Mal always had a fondness for lonely outsiders. Dom himself was the first example of that.

Mal smacked his husband's arm lightly. "I'm just saying. We'll go to his apartment. We'll go into his dreams, and we'll find out who he is. We'll talk, and then if we want to keep him, we will. And if he turns out to be a deranged killer…you…you owe me a diamond bracelet," She said with utter conviction.

"Deal," Dom muttered trying not to smile too much, but he couldn't help it. He loved his wife too damn much. "Let's find, Pierce Street. Glendale Apartments, number 41A."

"Sounds charming," Mal mumbled before backing out of the parking lot and heading back out to the open road.

The Glendale apartments were only ten minutes away from the Vegas strip, but there was no sign of glitz and glamour to them. In fact, they were rather…dirty. The buildings looked like a series of cheap motels patched together from the 60s. There was a swimming pool in the middle of the parking lot, though no one would want to go swimming in it. The water was a deep green color, it evoked more of a swamp quality than a pool. Uncontrolled greenery surrounded the pool area, weeds, grass, any sort of life was trying to poke through the old battered concrete.

"Just like I thought, charming," Mal replied glancing over at Dom.

"Well we aren't staying here for the night, just remember that," Dom patted his suit checking for the familiar feeling of his gun, while Mal did the same with a pistol attached to her leg under her dress. Both satisfied, they slowly moved from the car. "It doesn't seem to be a social area," He pointed out before pulling a silver suitcase from the backseat. The only thing that seemed to be moving around them was the swamp pool's surface, no doubt frogs had moved in.

Mal shook her head. "No. Suppose not. Let's go." Her eyes scanned the apartment numbers which were labeled clearly. "There it is." She pointed towards the very end of the first building, second floor. "End unit. Maybe he has a bigger living room than his neighbors."

Dom had to smirk just a bit, at least she had a way of keeping herself amused in these situations. The couple climbed the stairs and headed towards Arthur's apartment. Standing in front of apartment 41 A, Dom took a deep breath before pounding the door with his fist. "Excuse me, could use some help here." He banged on the door again waiting for any response. Usually, even strangers, would answer the door if there was a plea for help.

"Not home," Mal whispered after Dom banged on the door one more time. "Go for it, love." She turned around and watched to make sure that there were no prying eyes on them.

Meanwhile, Dom dropped down to the lock, pulled out picks from his pocket and started to work. Five minutes later, he turned the door knob and pushed the door to Arthur's apartment open. "We clear?"

"We're clear, no one is stupid enough to live in a place like this," Mal muttered, turning around to follow Dom into Arthur's apartment. The first thing that hit them was the smell. It reeked of cigarette smoke so much that Mal coughed a few times into her hand. "My god, someone has an addiction." She glanced up to see her husband with wide eyes staring at the far wall of the apartment.

"Yes, I think he does," Dom whispered.

The entire wall was covered from floor to ceiling with papers, post its, and markings in a deep red. In the very middle of the wall was a set of pictures. Dom recognized Adam Goode with a large red "x" across his face. There were three other pictures. Each one had the same large red "x". Below the pictures were maps which were clearly labeled. The grounds to the casino, the pipes of the casino, the airshafts, the whole city of Vegas, the casino to this apartment, all laid out. Numbers were placed here and there, it took Dom a few moments to realize that they were times. How long it would take to get from the front door of the Sunstone to Adam's office. How long it would take from the Sunstone parking lot to return to this apartment. It was all planned. On top of the pictures were letters. Notes from Adam Goode to Arthur. Some looked like simple notes that you would pass to a friend in math class. Others were official papers. A welcome to the Sunstone casino, a letter of Condolence for Arthur's grandparents from Holland Goode, Adam's uncle…

There were more papers on the wall that Dom didn't get the chance to investigate. Mal's hand was on his shoulder. "We're leaving," She whispered stress clearly in her words. "No way, Dom. No fucking way. This is something a serial killer would do! We need to go now."

"Excuse me."

Mal and Dom froze for a moment only to turn around to see a man at the door. He was incredibly lean, incredibly young, and incredibly well dressed. His name tag read Arthur.